Join us on Twitter and IRC (#ludumdare on Afternet.org) for the Theme Announcement!

Thanks everyone for coming out! For the next 3 weeks, we’ll be Playing and Rating the games you created.You NEED ratings to get a score at the end. Play and Rate games to help others find your game.We’ll be announcing Ludum Dare 36’s August date alongside the results.

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It’s beautiful isn’t it? Admire it. Yes… the excellent craftsmanship, love, care, and attention you put into every detail of the game you just made.

Oh, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself am I? I’m rushing ahead to the good part. Trying to pass all the motivational stuff and get right to…

The Theme of MiniLD 54:

IT’S A RACE!

What Kind of Race?

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Any kind! Racing games can come in many forms.

They can be traditional racing of Vrooom! Vroooooom! around a track and beat your opponents.

You can race to eat as many guavas as you can before the world runs out of them.

Or who knows, what if you make a game that’s made entirely of race conditions and have to hopefully win the game before the game crashes?

Interpret this however you’d like

What Are the Rules?

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Rules are pretty relaxed. Work with whomever you choose, and whenever you want. Try to only spend 48 hours on it though, but if you really want to spend more, just let everyone know that in your submission.

Also note: no restrictions on assets and such other than you must have the right to use them.

The Mini has begun and will end on September 29th – 23:59 GMT

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That should give you a day to rest before the October Challenge starts and some time for me to learn color coordination.

Sup Fellow Ludum Dare participants? This is your friendly neighborhood toaster reminding you all to make sure you’re really ready for the upcoming Ludum Dare. Here’s a few general purpose tips that you should take note of for not just Ludum Dare, but just in general.

Backup your work always, often
Whether you just work out of dropbox, or use source control, make sure you regularly back stuff up as you go along. You may get super tired along the way and may not make the best of judgement calls, power may go out at random, leading you to lose data, and precious hours of work. If not using source control, or something like Construct, Stencyl, Multimedia Fusion, or Gamemaker, try to save new revisions under different filenames to be safe, or if you need to revert. Do note that on the dropbox site you can revert to older versions of files, but trust me, in most cases, it won’t help you at all.

Eat decent food

TIME TO FEAST ON JUNK FOOD ALL DAY LIKE PROGRAMMERS IN THE MOVIES! No. Eat well, treat yourself well, and you’ll have the right kind of energy and such to continue on and work effectively and happily. Not to say a cookie or three isn’t bad every now and then…

Destroy… Then Improve

If things aren’t working out, don’t be afraid to scrap parts of your game that just don’t work, no matter how much time you spent on it. Trying to shoehorn things into working may cost you more time than removing that extra feature that breaks everything, or even rewriting the feature entirely.

Use What you know

If you know C++ well, use it. If you know C# well, use it. Flixel, Flashpunk, Unity? Use it. If you know Gamemaker, Construct, Multimdia Fusion, Stencyl, GameSalad, Twine, etc. Just use it. There is no shame in a finished game. There is no shame in playing to your strengths. This round, I may consider the use of Construct 2 or similar tool, rather than SFML 2 and C++ (which I’m slowly getting better at) in order to focus on one of my weaker aspects (Art), and spend time on something I really love to do (music). Super Crate Box and Spelunky were Gamemaker titles, so be awesome with whatever tools you use.

Who needs a map?

If you need help? Get some. Use the internet, check out if anyone isn’t too busy on irc for advice and such. Don’t be afraid to get a bit of help if you’re really stuck. But do be advised, most of the awesome people on the internet will be busy with their own Ludum Dare projects, so be patient if you ask on irc. It is advised that you make sure you know how to research problems and their solutions. Also make sure you check out the tools list on the Ludum Dare site if there’s anything you may need, be it pixel editors or music and audio tools. It’s a pretty good list of nice free stuff.

Well these are a few tips I’ll be trying to follow during the Ludum Dare. Hopefully these help someone out.

After sleeping on the theme, an idea just popped up in my head. So I started coding away in XNA with a bit of my old broken game framework. While I have a partially busy day, I kept the idea simple enough that I should be able to finish it all up by tomorrow.